The game registered its 100 millionth user in February 2014, its inventor Markus Persson, aka Notch, announced on Twitter.

After an initial purchase of the game Minecraft is free to play but there are in-game purchases available.

The game is set in a virtual world made of cubes of different materials. Almost all of these can be used as building blocks and a few can be refined into usable raw materials (wood, iron, diamond etc).

Playing the game involves surviving by using blocks to build a shelter and turning raw materials and combinations of them into items (swords, armour, bows) to help kill the game's many monsters.